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With a looming midterm election, Democrats don’t seem to realize the danger to their political prospects from the Justice Department scandal they have been studiously ignoring: the dismissal of the voter intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party. Although the dismissal and the refusal of Justice to provide information about it was never “small potatoes” as some have termed it, the potential scandal is really much bigger than that now. There is sworn testimony by a DOJ attorney corroborated by other evidence that an Obama political appointee actually told the career staff that (1) no voting cases would be filed against black or other minority defendants no matter how egregious their violations of the law and (2) Justice would not enforce Section 8 of the National Voter Registration Act, which requires states to maintain the accuracy of their voter registration lists by cleaning off ineligible voters.

An extraordinary number of Americans, even those who don’t pay much attention to Washington, know about the Black Panther case and have seen the video of paramilitary thugs blocking a Philadelphia polling place. They have watched incredulously as the Justice Department, our chief law enforcement agency, has refused to comply with subpoenas from the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. They have watched Republican members of Congress demand information about this inexcusable conduct, while Democrats have blocked any action to investigate it. This in stark contrast to Democrats’ manufactured anger over the firing of a handful of U.S. Attorneys during the Bush administration, a non-scandal the Justice Department just dismissed after it concluded there was no criminal wrongdoing in political appointees who serve at the discretion of the president being let go at the discretion of the president.

The lawless stonewalling by Justice is a major scandal, but the evidence that has surfaced about the opposition of the Obama administration to race-neutral enforcement of civil rights laws, as well as a refusal to enforce federal requirements ensuring the accuracy and validity of voter registration lists three months before an election, fill Americans with great concern and suspicion. They realize that there can be no worse and more dangerous abuse of power than having a Justice Department where politics and ideology drive law enforcement decisions.

Democrats continue to ignore this at their peril. Rep. Brad Sherman found that out recently in a town hall meeting in his home district in California. If the Republicans win a majority of the House in November, Attorney General Holder may realize it, too: one of the congressman whose requests for information Holder has been ignoring, Lamar Smith, is in line to become chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, the committee with the most authority over the Justice Department. And all seven GOP members of the Senate Judiciary Committee have just demanded an investigation of this scandal.

American voters have noticed this, and in contrast to the pseudo-scandals about the Justice Department that were manufactured by Democrats and their JournoList allies during the prior administration, this is a real one that damages the integrity and reputation of the administration and its Justice Department.

The most important story coming out of the U.S. Department of Agriculture this past week had nothing to do with Shirley Sherrod.

True enough that the former state rural development director in Georgia was run over by the brain-dead politics of left and right, black and white. But out of sight, the most sweeping protections offered to livestock producers in the last 100 years were getting a bipartisan and biracial lambasting in Congress.

Here’s the story nobody outside the farm press paid attention to: In June, the USDA proposed new regulations under the Packers and Stockyards Act of 1921. The rules would give new rights to the thousands of farm families that grow chickens under contract for the food giants, such as Tyson Foods and Perdue. And the proposed regs aimed to instill more competition in beef markets, where a small number of producers control almost all sales.

What would the regulations do? For example, the big chicken companies regularly require their contractors to make capital investments. Farmers are asked to invest hundreds of thousands of dollars in order to qualify for a contract, but the contract can be canceled with little notice. It’s a neat business model.

The new regulations would force companies to publish their contracts (so everyone can see the best deal being offered in a market that is monopolized by a few firms). And the new rules would require the companies to guarantee that contractors have the opportunity to pay off 80% of their investments.

The rules would also give livestock raisers greater ability to sue packers if they are harmed by price manipulation. Livestock farmers have won billion dollar judgments against packers in the last few years, only to see those awards overturned on appeal by a narrow interpretation of the 1921 act.

The House Agriculture Subcommittee on Livestock, Dairy and Poultry held a hearing on the regs last week and members of both parties lambasted the USDA, calling its new rules as “silly,” a “serious mistake,” “offensive,” and a “clear violation” of what legislators intended.”

Subcommittee chair David Scott, an African-American Democrat from Georgia (Sherrod’s home state) led the charge, promising that if the regs were enacted as written, the House would take action.

Last week’s hearing started what several people have called a war between ranchers/farmers and the big producers. Livestock raisers see this fight as one that will determine whether independent farmers and ranchers will be found in rural communities a decade from now.

President Obama called Ms. Sherrod to apologize after last week’s character assassination. But nobody has contacted the country’s ranchers, chicken raisers or hog farmers for even a cursory kiss-my-foot after members of the House - black and white, left and right, Republican and Democrat - shredded rules that would give these small business people some opportunity for economic success.

Amitai EtzioniUniversity Professor and Professor of International Affairs, GW University :

Iran: The Military Option

What a difference one month makes.

Late in June a U.S. Army publication, the Military Review, featured a cover article arguing that engagement of Iran and sanctions against it will fail, and that containment is unreliable. And it agreed with those who hold that an attack on Iran’s nuclear sites would face many difficulties, and instead argued that attacking other military targets, such as the Revolutionary Guard encampments and naval facilities (and possible dual use assets), would engender “pain” that is likely to lead Iran to give up its military nuclear ambitions. It would also impose much less collateral damage.

As the author of the article, at first, I was chastised. A columnist in The Financial Times called the proposal “alarming” (without bothering to elaborate why) and warned it would “inflict pain all around.” Noam Chomsky - who had no comments on Iran’s threats to wipe Israel off the map nor the Holocaust denial by its leaders - called my lines “inflammatory” and argued that I was in effect helping Iran. My e-mails included much stronger denouements.

On July 6, United Arab Emirates Ambassador Yousef al-Otaiba told a meeting at the Aspen Institute that he favored a military strike against Iran, despite the economic and military consequences to his country.

Commenting on the incident, Middle East expert Jeffrey Goldberg, writer for The Atlantic Monthly, said that al-Otaiba merely provided “the standard position of many Arab states.” And, he noted, support is growing for the military option, because Iran's Sunni neighbors really want the U.S. to do it.

On July 15, Joe Klein reported in a Time piece entitled, “An Attack on Iran: Back on the Table,” that “the U.S. Army's Central Command, which is in charge of organizing military operations in the Middle East, has made some real progress in planning targeted air strikes - aided, in large part, by the vastly improved human-intelligence operations in the region. ‘There really wasn't a military option a year ago,’ an Israeli military source told me. ‘But they've gotten serious about the planning, and the option is real now.’”

Bill Kristol, writing with Jamie Fly in the Weekly Standard, states, “It’s now increasingly clear that the credible threat of a military strike against Iran’s nuclear program is the only action that could convince the regime to curtail its ambitions.”

One should not overlook that by far the best offer Iran made to settle the matter was advanced by its rulers in May, 2003 - just as the U.S. military disposed easily of Saddam’s regime. Moreover, during a ten-day visit to Iran, I noted that many villages and towns have memorial sites to the million or so young men they lost in fighting Iraq. And in all my meetings I gained a strong sense that Iran is likes to talk tough, but is very leery of another war. Just having the military option more visibly on the table may do the trick.

(Co-written with Trent Wisecup, Vice President of Navigators Global LLC)

While the GOP will undoubtedly have a strong midterm election with significant pickups in the House, Senate and governorships, there are larger demographic shifts at play that will complicate the party’s efforts to win back the White House in 2012. The recent controversy surrounding the Arizona law on illegal immigration is compounding the GOP’s already significant problems with Latino voters, making it more difficult for the party to regain its footing in the West and Florida.

In 2008, Barack Obama won the combined minority vote 80-20. Minorities were 26 percent of the electorate then. In 2012, the minority vote will likely be 30 percent of the pie. If President Obama wins similar support in the minority communities, it will be nearly impossible for the Republican candidate to win.

The Republican Party needs someone who can transcend the deep chasm between its conservative base and Latino voters, who are rapidly moving away from the party because of its harsh rhetoric and policies on immigration.

Republicans giddy about the upcoming midterms should be mindful that off-year elections play to the GOP’s advantage because white seniors constitute a larger share of the electorate than in presidential elections when turnout is significantly higher.

Consider the electoral math: In four out of the last five presidential elections, the Democratic candidate has averaged 264 electoral votes. For all intents and purposes, the Democrats start out only six electoral votes shy of the goal line. The Democrats have a greater margin of error than Republicans in presidential years. The average electoral vote count of the two Bill Clinton wins and Obama’s 2008 victory is 377. George W. Bush only averaged 278 in his two victories.

The Republican Party must find a way to connect with Latino voters. A poll of Texas Hispanics conducted earlier this year found that over half called themselves “conservative.” The GOP’s message of rugged individualism, hard work, thrift, family values, entrepreneurship, and a strong national defense ought to resonate with Latinos, but the anti-immigrant rhetoric of many Republican politicians drives them away. Being politically competitive among Hispanic voters is the only way the GOP can spread the electoral playing field. Otherwise, the party will have to thread a needle to win that’s getting smaller and smaller each four year cycle.

Republicans will either fix their Latino problem in 2012 or the party faces a long walk in the wilderness at the Presidential level similar to what the Democrats endured essentially from 1968 to 1992. Seven out of the ten states with the fastest growing Latino populations are in the Deep South. The ethnic make-up of the 18-29 demographic in 2008 was 62 percent white, 38 percent combined minority. That’s the future.

Republicans can’t afford to alienate minority voters and hope to succeed in presidential elections. Unless the GOP fixes its problem with minorities and especially Latinos, Barack Obama will become only the second a two-term Democratic President since FDR.

Bump #1 North Korea. An official government statement of how North Korea plans to respond to upcoming U.S.-South Korea Naval Exercise. "The more desperately the U.S. imperialists brandish their nukes and the more zealously their lackeys follow them, the more rapidly the [North's] nuclear deterrence will be bolstered up along the orbit of self-defense and the more remote the prospect for the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula will be become."

Bump #2 Iran. In a new anti-nuke documentary, as New York Post review notes "The now-famous ex-CIA figure Valerie Plame Wilson unambiguously says, "Without question, Iran is trying to get a nuclear bomb." The IRNA news agency quoted Amhadinejad, "The latest anti-Iran sanctions of the UN Security Council (UNSC) will have no effect on Iran's nuclear programme."

Bump #3 Russia.Yury Savenko, first deputy chairman of the Duma Defense Committee observed: "Whether the Americans want it or not, they, after adopting the New START treaty, will give us a breathing space that we can use to reform and modernize the country's nuclear-missile potential."

Bump#4 China. Dilutes UN Security Council stand against Iran and North Korea. Will build-up its nuclear arsenal in response to Russia.

Bump#5 The Rest of the World. For example, Greg Copley reports in the World Tribune, "A quiet but intense debate is ongoing within senior circles of the governing Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi (Justice and Development Party: AKP) in Turkey over whether or not this is the time to proceed rapidly with the development and acquisition of nuclear weapons"

Bump#6 Reality. Scowcroft pretty much admitted in a panel at CSIS that New START does actually accomplish anything. Government officials admitted in a Senate hearing that Russia cheats. Sen. McCain asked, "Well, what this brings to the casual observer's mind, General, is if it doesn't have any consequences if they do any cheating, what's the point in having a treaty?"

Bump#7. An administration we can't trust.The White House dispatched Defense Secretary Gates <http://bigpeace.com/jcarafano/2010/07/16/gates-support-for-new-start-worrisome-not-reassuring/> to defend the treaty--but his credibility is dropping.

There are reports of furious backroom dealings, negotiations, and threats of retaliation from the administration to get enough Republican senators to sign on to New START. All signs that the White House knows New START can't stand on its merits.

Bump#8. Anti-nuclear weapons activists. Their latest documentary asserts as one reviewer notes, "that the United States and Russia, the entities with the most weapons by far, should lead the other nuclear countries toward a total disarmament initiative." Since Russia is modernizing its arsenal, all their rhetoric is going to achieve is pressure to approve New START and for the U.S. to disarm, which actually makes other nations' nuclear weapons more valuable and thus less likely they will give them up.

Bump#9.The future.There is research to suggest that New START and the "road to zero" might actually result in more nuclear proliferation and increase the likelihood of nuclear conflict.

Bump#10. Hurbis. The White House, the greybeards, and their anti-nuclear activist cheerleaders continue to ignore alternatives that might actually diminish the threat of nuclear destruction. There are real alternatives for effective arms control. Former Assistant Secretary of State Kim Holmes recently wrote, that critics of "New START do not oppose all arms-control pacts. But they worry that this treaty can lead to more instability in the world, not less. They think there is a better way to achieve arms control. And they are disappointed that the Obama administration negotiated a treaty pegged to yesterday's problems."

The Bell Job: Grand Theft Government That Could Tilt The California Election

By now readers have surely heard about Bell, Calif., the blue collar town of 38,000 souls whose city administrator was pulling down nearly $800,000 a year in base pay until angry citizens discovered it and forced his resignation on Thursday. Had he stayed, he would have gotten a $94,000 raise next July. Pity him now; he will immediately start drawing a paltry $650,000 a year taxpayer-paid pension for the rest of his life. He is only 56, having worked for the town less than 17 years. Meanwhile, his assistant, who also resigned, could retire on over $400,000 a year. Even the chief of police was in on the heist, with a salary 50 percent higher than the police chief of nearby Los Angeles.

Pull out a calculator and the story gets even better. The median family income in Bell is less than $35,000 a year. The likely retirement payout for the three disgraced employees, which is apparently untouchable, will total about $73 million. Repeat that to yourself, gasp yet again, and then ask how your own 401(k) is doing. That's over $9,000 for each family in Bell, which is nearly five times what each paid in local taxes last year. And remember that the tiny town has just one high school, one library, and is one of the poorest communities in that part of the state.

While Bell's debacle is unprecedented, even for California, it is only the most egregious product of a catastrophic pay and pension system established and protected over the years by the likes of Jerry Brown and other strongly pro-public union California officials during their tenures in key decision-making positions. It is one of the primary causes of the state's (and the state's local governments') current fiscal mess, and the sole reason that California's public employee pension plans are, according to an analysis by the Los Angeles Times, over $500 billion in the hole. That's a whopping $42,000 per household. A federal bailout of just the state's pension deficit, let alone its huge structural budget deficit, would significantly exceed the net taxpayer cost of TARP and the bailing out the entire U.S. financial system.

Sensing his vulnerability on the issue, state attorney general and gubernatorial candidate Brown hastily announced an investigation of the Bell matter, although that inquiry is likely to focus on the city council members, who pay themselves nearly $100,000 a year for a job that, in most towns that size, involves just a few hours a week. Brown then switched gears and backed a set of modest reforms (e.g., new public hires would retire at 60 instead of the current 55) that would still leave the state pension plans soaking in red ink, protect the fattest pensions among current retirees, and be much more favorable to future hires than the proposals made months ago by Republican candidate Meg Whitman. Whitman wants to bring the state's pension benefits closer in line with those of other states and the private sector.

The last thing Brown wants Californians to focus on in the weeks leading up to the November election is the legacy of the hidden-bomb policies that he pressed throughout his entire political career. He'd much rather talk about George Bush, who notably was never a California governor, secretary of state, attorney general or mayor. For much of four decades, Brown has been the state's public unions' best friend. No wonder they are now spending millions each week and mobilizing their vast membership to smear Whitman and elect Brown. Their belief is that, ultimately, Brown will leave it to California's taxpayers, not the beneficiaries of the out-sized pensions, to cough up the $500 billion.

Until this week, polls showed Brown with a slight lead, but the Bell horror story may become the equivalent of his having paroled a felon who went on to cause gruesome mayhem. Usually that's an unfair connection to make in a campaign, but not this time: Jerry Brown's fingerprints are all over the crime scene.

We are being told by the Washington inside crew that there is a growing consensus that the Social Security retirement age should be raised to 70. When the Washington inside crew forms a consensus, it's time to get
very worried. After all, the last time these geniuses had a consensus it was around the invasion of Iraq, and we know how that turned out.

Raising the retirement age amounts to a cut in benefits. When it is fully phased in, it will reduce benefits by roughly 15 percent. The people who will see their benefits cut are the people who just saw most of their wealth destroyed with the collapse of the housing bubble and the subsequent plunge in the stock market. This happened because the geniuses who were running economic policy (e.g. Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke) could not see an $8 trillion housing bubble. Now that they have cost them most of the wealth they were able to accumulate during their working years, the same elite crew wants to take away the Social Security benefits that they have worked and paid for.

It's also worth noting that many middle and lower income workers will not be able to work longer to offset lower benefits. Unlike the people who have formed a consensus on cutting benefits, a very high percentage of ordinary workers have physically demanding jobs. It's not just manufacturing and construction that are physically demanding. Jobs in the "new economy" custodians, health care assistants, waiters and dishwashers all involve more physical effort than sitting at a computer planning benefit cuts.

I would like POLITICO's editors to address, specifically, what they are going to do to improve the quality of political discourse and stop amplifying and celebrating liars who promote smears. After the events of the past week, and the shame of the POLITICO celebration of Breitbart, you owe serious people that discussion. Step up to the plate, please.

Will you, for example, stop promoting people who have been shown to disseminate garbage?

Professor you make some very serious charges with regard to POLITICO's coverage and discourse yet, you fail to provide any evidence to support your points. Who are the “liars”? What are the “smears”? Who are the “people” POLITICO is “promoting”? What do you consider specifically the “garbage” that is being disseminated? Who are the “serious people” POLITICO owes? If you are going to make charges, at least have the gumption to back up your accusations with facts. Will you please amplify on your brief yet accusatory post with facts?

Jim Roemer (guest)
WI:

Social Security would benefit from eliminating the cap and taxing all income. This would provide more funds for the system and only effect those with incomes over the current cap. Raising the age to 70 is in my opinion not beneficial to our seniors who lose their effectiveness in the workplace through the mid sixties.

Our budget deficits could be greatly reduced by changing our methods of taxation along with shrinking the size of government. Congress should work on replacing the income tax with a flat sales tax that was set at a rate high enough to eliminate the deficit. After the deficit is eliminated the % of the flat rate tax could be reduced. The key is though to also reduce government spending and eliminate these outlandish pensions with laws that disclose and limit pensions for government officials. Those pensions of Bell, Calif., officials may be a sample of how overpaid and bloated our compensation of government employees has become. It seems the richest in our society are never happy with their earnings and keep finding ways to enrich themselves at the expense of the general middle class and workers.

jay miranda (guest)
TX:

Has anyone stopped to question how a person that has been in public service all his adult life can amass a fortune worth in the millions? How does someone who is a public servant afford the millions of dollars in real estate, and can afford the legal expenses? Charlie Rangel is the poster child for term limits! Please, do not tell me how much good he has done in the past 40 years, what he did was to help himself to the "cash drawer".

We can only blame ourselves because we allow these people to continue to go back to Washington, year after year, and we turn our attention away while they carry out their dirty deeds. The system is broke and so is the American electorate. They are more concerned with who won American Idol or Dancing with the Stars, rather than who is working for "them" in the Congress. So now we have a broke system and a nation that is broke as well. Laws do not matter any longer and doing the right thing has been tossed aside and replaced with personal greed. The founding fathers never envisioned politicians serving for decades after decades.

Arnoldo Torres (guest)
CA:

Interesting article but nothing really new. Many Republicans and others have said the same thing. The problem is that no one has offered to actually begin the process of changing how Republicans correct this problem. Some Republican candidates have at least improved their campaign approaches to Latinos - Whitman is a good example, but the substance is not there especially on immigration.

There are alternatives and I have written such a policy/legislative package and have circulated it to some Republican staff and others. Feedback I have received is very positive because it reflects a serious change in how we define the challenge and thus approach the problem. It is based on many years of experience on immigration--I worked on the immigration reform bill in the 1980's and learned a great deal of what the real problems are and we certainly are not really dealing with them now or over the last 10 years. But that is really not the problem. The problem is that I have not encountered too many Republicans or Democrats that really want to solve this problem or at least correct some of the real problems we complain about daily.

Art Harman - www.SaveMannedSpace.com (guest)
VA:

Forty-one years ago this week, men from the planet earth set foot on the surface of the moon, stating "That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind." Truly the greatest accomplishment of mankind. Today, the president is determined to kill the dream and end American manned space exploration; scrapping the space shuttles and the Constellation rockets which would take us to the Moon, Mars and beyond; and surrendering tech leadership to China and Russia

It doesn't have to be this way, and you can help. Call your representative and senators and ask that they save the space shuttles; build or improve Constellation; and adopt a bold "in this decade" plan to take Americans to the Moon, Mars and an asteroid. Yes, in this decade! It took America just eight years from JFK's "In this decade" speech to reach the moon with 1960's technology; we CAN have a moon colony, a trip to an asteroid, and a Mars landing in this decade using today's far more advanced technology. The Bear Stearns bailout - about $30 billion. A year in Iraq and Afghanistan - about $130 billion. Let's show where our priorities should be; let's launch a bright, exciting future for all Americans--and rebuild our economy as a result! Let's put NASA back on track!

Ken Hughes (guest)
MI:

Every elected or appointed official would have to sign a pledge upon leaving federal service they would honor a five-year moratorium on lobbying for any special interest group. An elected or appointed official would have to agree his or her spouse would be prevented from serving as a lobbyist to Congress.

Every elected official would be required to maintain his or her official residence in the state or district they represent. Each elected official would be required to spend one week a month in the state or district they represent and make themselves available to their constituents in person. For those who say they don’t have the time, there are 24 hours in a day and 365 days in a year. That levels the playing field for everyone.

Jim Wojtasiewicz (guest)
VA:

This weekend's Hans A. von Spakovsky piece is another perfect example of Arena letting itself be used for the dissemination of lies. You didn't just publish it, you headlined it on the home page!

The piece's central premise, that the Obama administration made a conscious decision to aid and abet voter intimidation and falsification of voter rolls in favor of black candidiates, doesn't just fail the Breitbart stink test, it fails the laugh test. The logic of the piece doesn't hold together at all, it sows unfounded fear through deliberate falsehood. Once again, the whole piece is one big lie, manufactured solely for the purpose of misleading the public and discrediting elections that haven't even happened yet! Where is your standard?

Helena Edwards (guest)
NY:

Our system of government is seriously broken and in desperate need of repair. We can no longer say honestly that we have a democracy in this country whereby the government is selected by the people for the people. The candidates are selected by corrupt leaders of political parties.

They use every tactic in the book to get candidates who are not part of their clubhouse from getting their names on the ballots. In the event that good, honest candidates get their names on the ballot, there is another corrupt system in place where the votes are stolen at the polling places and sometimes at the Boards of Election throughout the country. Then now we hear about voter intimidation - something that we believed was dead forever. With this corrupt system, how can Americans get decent leadership in our government? How can we honestly criticize the government of Afghanistan, Cuba, and African countries for corruption and oppression when we have an infestation grown right here in our own country? Charlie Rangel is the most recent government leader to be charged with an ethics violation aka corruption. Rep. Gregory Meeks is currently under investigation. There are many more who have been marred by these same corruption charges.

Dan Macmillan (guest)
MA:

Raising the retirement age is not the answer to our Social Security problem. Raising the cap, however, is. We should be looking to lower the retirement age and allow young folks to replace sixty somethings in the workplace. Raise the cap to include all income and SS would be solvent forever.

Joseph Goldberger (guest)
PA:

Handling the New Black Panther Philadelphia case by the attorney general is deplorable. But why did the Philadelphia DA (Abraham) and the Pennsylvania Attorney General (Corbett, now a candidate for governor) not prosecute under Pennsylvania laws?

Thomas Lindaman (guest)
IA:

The past two weeks have not been good for the African-American community. Whether it's the New Black Panther Party (and the Obama administration's virtual non-reaction to it), the NAACP flap with the tea parties, and now the Sherrod circus, blacks have had some of their dirty laundry aired in public, with the most important of this being the blind racism permeating leftist blacks in particular.

After years of being portrayed at the victims of racism, the black left is now having to deal with the PR fallout of having their own racism exposed for the rest of the world to see. The black left have two choices: continue on the path they're on, or come to grips with their hypocrisy. If the NAACP's reaction to the Sherrod situation is any indication as to how the black community en masse is going to react, they're going to be in for a hard lesson about how little playing the race card actually affects whites anymore.

John Regan (guest)
CA:

I don't know what's more frightening: Mr. von Spakovsky shamelessly jumping on Fox News's race-baiting bandwagon or the fact that he sat on the FEC, and that such an ideologically driven person was given authority over safeguarding our elections. And Republicans wonder why African-Americans are turning against the GOP!

Stefan Saal (guest)
NH:

It’s time to eliminate the Bush tax cuts. The people can no longer afford to treat the rich so generously. The government needs the revenue. Sorry.

roberta schlesinger (guest)
AZ:

I can't believe you're still promoting the bogus "Black Panther" story. Two thugs outside of a black precinct polling place doesn't constitute the attention that the story has been receiving on Fox and in fact been promoting on Fox. You, once again, are running with a race-baiting story whose only merit seems to be the hallucinations of the so-called reporters on Fox

Dan Kearl (guest)
OR:

I see you let the Heritage Foundation person throw out the Black Panther non-story (except to Fox News and the conservative spin machine). In the jargon of Internet forums, this guy is called a troll. Why does POLITICO give these guys a forum? They advertise enough on the Limbaugh/Hannity propaganda radio shows. I thought POLITICO was trying for a higher standard, but apparently not.

Brian Burks (guest)
OH:

Mr. Spakovsky, It would appear you know a pseudo-scandal when you see one.The NBP case is exactly that, manufactured by J. Christian Adams, a right-wing activist with a grudge to push at DOJ, and a certain cable "news" organization.

If voter-intimidation did indeed occur in Philly, where is the person who was intimidated? Not one person has come forward. You claim Mr. Adam's testimony is"corroborated by other evidence", but provide none. Not a single document or witness. Where's the beef? The person who referred to this "scandal" as "small potatoes" was Abigail Thernstrom, vice chairwoman of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, a conservative Bush appointee. No matter how hard you, and others, try, this is not a scandal, but manufactured outrage by one man, and one network, in an attempt to smear Obama and Holder, nothing more.

Robert Huffman (guest)
OR:

When the right-wing noise machine makes accusations, you should assume they are unfounded until proven otherwise. This means refraining from publishing articles about the ridiculous accusations they make.

Steve McKinney (guest)
CO:

The reason for the "Latino problem" Mr. Conda is this: Republicans embody a core belief that there is a set of values and rules which are not only distinctly American - to which each individual should aspire and also embrace - but also that those values are somehow transcendental, i.e., promulgated by a divine providence (as Burke would phrase it).

Those values are the basis of Western Christian civilization. Unfortunately, Western Christian civilization is also associated with white Anglo Saxonism and with the English language. In short, Republicans are against an America with a diversity of beliefs and cultures. This should be very clear to Latinos and, I suspect, is why Republicans do and will have a permanent problem with Latinos and other minorities.

Mike Gorman (guest)
OH:

Cesar Conda, you are right. I think when the GOP is in power again they should give the Hispanic community free health care, free education, free housing and give all of them that are here illegally full immunity. Wait, we are already do that.

Hell, let's try go the USC route and offer them signing bonus. How about this, how about we forget about white, Hispanic and black and treat everyone that is here legally as an American? Why does everyone need special treatment and set asides to make it, not tough enough?

David Fielder (guest)
TX:

Ok, you say that we must pander to the Hispanics. This is the same old tired argument and the same old race politics that will get the GOP nowhere! You cannot campaign on a racial template! Just offer them the core values of conservatism. Freedom, liberty, personal responsibility and that government cannot live your life for you.

Brad Bonar (guest)
PA:

I hope that Professor Skocpol means that POLITICO will stop amplifyng and celebrating liars who promote smears, like the n-word being shouted 15 times on the Capitol Hill steps, without any shred of evidence (video tape all over the place of the event -- nowhere is anyone heard shouting the n-word).

It's a lie and a smear. I also hope that Professor Skocpol, in the interests of improving the quality of political discourse, calls for media elites and government officials to stop trying to classify all tea party activists and town-hallers as racists. Something tells me, however, that this Harvard professor means no such thing.

Tom Genin (guest)
CT:

Theda Skocpol is apparently taking the Charlie Rangel method of dealing with criticism. Rangel lambasted the young Russert of MSNBC for showing "no respect" to Rangel for actually asking a question about Rangel's ethics violations.

A question Rangel then failed to answer. Ms. Skocpol obviously took offense to the responses to her recent post on the "Teachable Moment" Arena piece dealing with Ms. Sherrod's firing. Dear Ms. Skocpol, as a sociology professor, surely you must be aware that disagreements are paramount to finding truth. Yet you appear to expect unfettered access to the masses and expect your one-sided eroneous tirades to go unchallaged, and woe to he who argues with the teacher. Facts, Ms. Skocpol, facts please...the world is waiting.

Lee (MMBJack) McCarty (guest)
NV:

Theda Skocpol has stated the gist of what has in recent months concerned me. As a guest contributor since April 2008 I do have a sense of the rightward drift in the philosopical underpinnings of POLITICO.com and the Arena.

For example, the most tea partier-oriented (guests) seem to have a solid forum going here and the people who are deeply concerned with the consequences of support for the far right-wing gang - let us be kind, people who do not want to see the success of a black president on anything and who support scum like Breitbart.

The travesty of that greatest of all superliars - Frank Luntz - who makes his living by inventing ways to change the meaning of words crafted together to produce the opposite meaning from the truth -such as crafting edited tape of the NAACP talk by Sharron Sherrod. The silence about this in the bulk of the media - other than MSNBC - is deafening. The dumbing down of the public which has been so relentlessly duped by the super liars who provide the unified talking points for all GOP speakers and groups - including Boehner, Cantor and Mitch McConnell. The Republicans want only one thing which is to renew the trillions in tax giveaway to the richest 1 to 2 percent which expires this year - made permanent.

Jim Jenk (guest)
IA:

Baloney. The GOP doesn't need to be democrat-lite; we've tried that before, it won't work. The voters will go with the real thing if their choice is between Tweedledum and Tweedledee. The GOP needs to stick to its guns; close the border, insist that immigration laws now on the books are enforced; and join with those interested in reform to change the guest worker provisions of current law.

That's the sticking point; most of the illegals don't want to become citizens. They are not ready to become Americans or even assume a dual citizenship; they are Mexicans, proud of their heritage, and want to stick with it. What they want is work, and work cannot be found in their own country so they come to ours. We've got work; so put the workers together with the employers and everyone is happy with two exceptions: one militant unionists who want to grow their union even if it means keeping out Mexicans, and (2) professional Democrats who want to embrace millions of illegal immigrants in order to persuade them to vote Democrat. We need to bypass the militant unionists and professional Democrats; then a solution both possible as well as likely.

Barry Aycock (guest)
FL:

To support the earlier question as to why POLITICO will not provide necessary consequences for members of its profession who knowingly publish lies in an effort to bully and intimidate. To make the point using POLITICO's own reporting please read below:

"That is because there are two big incentives that drive behavior at the intersection where politics meets media. One is public attention. The other is money. Experience shows there’s lots more of both to be had by engaging in extreme partisan behavior." "Conservative commentator David Frum agreed: “I think everyone will for a little while be more cautious about thinly sourced material and clips that look edited,” he said. “The effect may even endure for some time. But beyond that, the imperatives that drive the modern media business are going to remain in place, and it’s hard to imagine that this incident — which after all has had no consequences for any of the people who are at fault — will persuade anyone that they need to do anything differently.”

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The Arena is a cross-party, cross-discipline forum for intelligent and lively conversation about political and policy issues. Contributors have been selected by POLITICO staff and editors. David Mark, Arena's moderator, is a Senior Editor at POLITICO. Each morning, POLITICO sends a question based on that day's news to all contributors.